Thank you ladies for your intelligent and thought provoking replies.

Having been both an ante-natal teacher and a breastfeeding counselor I am 
consistantly confronted by the impact these professions have on women at a 
vulnerable time in their lives. So many women have been uplifted and 
empowered, or crushed and left unsure by the people that are with them at 
these times.
In addition, I am continually dismayed by many women's lack of belief in their 
own feminine abilities. Logically, if women have been giving birth and nursing 
from time out of mind then your average woman should be saying "I can do 
that. What do they have that I don't have?" and yet they don't.
The separation of women from joyous, empowered femininity is so vast 
sometimes that it seems like a plot.
(Sorry, I read too much science fiction)
In any discussion of guilt and breast feeding I wonder if we have to keep in 
mind that, as many have said, ours is not really a paramedical profession, and 
that there is something of the mother and the villiage wise woman there too. 
If we don't empower these women, who will?
So, on the one hand we should not have to take on the burden of someone 
else's perhaps inappropriate guilt. On the other hand, because that kind if guilt 
is defensive and disconnecting will we missing out on the other, possibly more 
essential, part of our job?
Bluntly, would a woman who ends up bottle feeding but feels like a good 
mother be more likely to turn to us next time because she wants to do even 
better, than a guilty, defensive one?

Reading the above I'm concerned that I might sound like I am accusing people 
of insensitive behavior. I don't believe we have insensitive ladies on our list. 
I'm talking "academically" as it were.

Yael Edelstein
Israel
who's daughter is now joyously breastfeeding her second child and helped me 
clarify my thoughts
Someday I may write about the amazing birth experience she had and let me 
share with her.

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